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2000 Senate · VA

Scott Rasmussen (Rasmussen Reports) · fieldwork ended 2000-10-24 (14 days before the election) · 1,100 respondents · IVR

The poll said

Democrat 42% · Republican 50%

R+8.0

The certified result

Democrat 47.68% · Republican 52.26%

R+4.6

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 42 − 50 = -8.00
  2. Actual margin = 47.680 − 52.255 = -4.575
  3. Signed miss = -8.00 − (-4.575) = -3.425
  4. Absolute miss = |-3.425| = 3.425

The poll overstated the Republican by 3.4 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 63619, race ID 1712 (538 database).